Is the US a dystopia?

the anchor stores when I was a kid at the local mall were Younkers, Montgomery Ward, Richman-Gordman, and Sears. I think all are dead as a doornail, now. as is that mall
My mom worked at Younkers in Merle Hay when she was in high school, before their big fire

The Target closest to me always seems to be in the middle of stocking up — there's always someone in one of the aisles putting stuff on shelves, and random sections will be emptier than they should be — but it's clean and well lit and nothing is locked up. I go about once a month.

There's a Ross next door, and a Best Buy, but I've never been inside either. All the big stores are clustered together in Kalispell, in fact — there's a Home Depot and a Walmart right by Target, and a Bed Bath & Beyond and a few other places across the road. My regular grocery store is Harvest Foods, which is a regional chain with stores in Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. But there are also local businesses that seem to be doing fine.

I must admit to being charmed by Tracer Hand's shopping list:

Underwear
Small dehumidifier
Serving spoon

And I imagine my spouse saying, "Hey dear? We need milk and cat food. Also can you swing by John Lewis and pick a couple more small dehumidifiers? Also we are running short on serving spoons, plus granola. Thanks."

Oh and please grab some extra panties while you're there, thxbye

“I bought a 12-pack of sexy thongs last week. They’re on the shelf behind the peanut butter”

It strikes me that the US dystopia thread taking an extended detour into nostalgia for department stores is an indisputable mark of the graying of ILX, like all those tooth-sucking 'Remember When...?' memes that started in email chains and moved to Facebook. Next on the agenda: a thread reminiscing about defunct mass market candy bars that gets 411 posts in five days.

Harvest Foods, which is a regional chain with stores in Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Washington

Was just thinking, Man, it's been forever since I've been in a Harvest Foods. Wonder where the nearest one is?

And that's when I discovered that they've been gone from my region for 27 years. Oh, maybe that's why I haven't been there lately.

https://i.imgur.com/y8jWr8w.jpg

The peanut butter shelf is for sexy thongs, the unsexy thongs are behind the Cheerios.

“I bought a 12-pack of sexy thongs last week. They’re on the shelf behind the peanut butter”

― badpee pooper (Eric H.)

"yeah, i'm looking for the _unsexy_ thongs, ya doof"

“You didn’t put unsexy thongs on the list, honey!”

"oh, for the love a... look, in the sexy/unsexy word pairing, sexy is the _marked_ term, and unsexy is the _unmarked_ term. therefore if i don't specify the sexiness of the thongs I'm looking for, your linguistic assumption should default to unsexy, and not to sexy. Come on sweetie, I know you have a background in Prague School structuralism, I shouldn't have to explain this to you again!"

ngl that's one of the things i miss most about my relationship with my ex, the _banter_

though her profound discomfort with sexy _anything_ did cause certain issues

This thread!

Aimless - you and Raymond started it

My response was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but OK.

america has been a dystopia ever since they took the reggie bar off the shelves

His response was that it has to be a deliberate strategy, and he believes it is intended to make consumers feel like they must be getting a "good deal" on merchandise because the stores themselves feel "cheap." i.e., we unconsciously associate low prices with a general sense of things being a little rundown. So where Target's design and decor is supposed to make their middle-income customer base feel like they're in a sort of upscale department-store setting but with moderate prices, DG and Walmart's is supposed to make their lower-income base feel like they're getting a bargain.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Sunday, January 21, 2024 10:29 AM (eleven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

yea I've heard stories of stores taking out nice ceilings so people could see the pipes above for this very reason

I understand the psychology, but talk about dystopian. "The market has decided that you have to shop in sad dingy stores."

in dystopia america the market shops in you

Guilty as charged (and I’ll spare you my own nostalgia for department store shopping in 1980s Maryland)

When chains moved to having polished concrete floors instead of floor tile, which was an aesthetic choice of some sort, my dad still worked in commercial floorcovering and it was a minor irritation.

I'm relatively neutral on the unfinished ceiling look, except that I hate its preponderance in restaurants and social places. It just makes everything annoyingly loud.

Lowes: We have the aesthetic of the nice mall's Montgomery Ward before they both closed.

The Home Depot: Our price tags look handwritten. There's wood everywhere. Birds fly around from shelf to shelf.

Our local Home Depot used to be a department store. I had previously worked there in the men's department. So if I need to go buy a toilet plunger, I am standing exactly in the place where I used to sell paisley ties.

Later it became famous because of a sniper incident, but that's a completely different story.

Birds in supermarkets/cash and carry: C/D?

Lowes: We have the aesthetic of the nice mall's Montgomery Ward before they both closed.

The Home Depot: Our price tags look handwritten. There's wood everywhere. Birds fly around from shelf to shelf.

No, I haven't been to that Lowes.

Not yet.

https://themessenger.com/news/texas-superintendent-black-student-locs-hair-punishment-lawsuit

A Texas school district superintendent defended the continued suspension of a Black student over his locs hairstyle in a full-page newspaper ad, paid for by an education foundation.

Darryl George has been suspended repeatedly by the Barbers Hill Independent School District for his hair. The teen's family filed a federal civil rights lawsuit saying the punishment violates the CROWN Act, an acronym for “Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair,” which became law in Texas in September.

The law is intended to prohibit race-based hair discrimination. But the school said the law does not address hair length and that is the reason for George’s suspension.

However, photos of George show him wearing his hair up in a way that does not reach below his ears.

The ad that appeared Sunday in the Houston Chronicle was written by district superintendent Greg Poole.

“Being an American requires conformity with the positive benefit of unity,” he stated, referencing strict codes at the military academies.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2024/01/26/mark-normand-stand-up-comedy-incident-hihi/72364363007/

Adding to the intrigue, Donald Glover shared several of HiHi's posts on his Instagram story, including a screenshot of a TMZ article about the Normand incident. "'Hi-Hi' available now," one of Glover's posts said. A Vanity Fair report published Thursday said Glover's upcoming show "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" features a mysterious entity nicknamed "Hihi." The HiHi Instagram account also shared videos of Tyra Banks being surrounded by two people in furry costumes at an NBA game this week, clips of which also went viral.

I'm not really sure I understood one bit of that but it seems to more generally pose the question 'is the modern world a dystopia?' imo

Yeah, but it was in USA today.

I know how hard it is some days to sweep the clouds away and get to sunnier days.

Our friend Elmo is right: We have to be there for each other, offer our help to a neighbor in need, and above all else, ask for help when we need it.

Even though it's hard, you're never alone. https://t.co/ffMJekbowo

— President Biden (@POTUS) January 31, 2024

Hardly an original or important thought, but I was standing waiting to cross a street this morning and was just reminded all at once about how needlessly cruel America is. First thing that caught my eye was the brand new "anti-homeless" (hate that term obvious, but I think it's important to emphasize how awful these things are and not sugar-coat them by using whatever pretty name developers wants us to use) spikes on all of the low window sills, ledges and concrete railings. As this was infuriating me all over again, I realized I could see that the city had thrown boots on four(!) different vehicles that I could see from where I stood. Not enough that they are insanely vigilant and waste so many resources on parking tickets, but they also have to add an extra layer of, "oh yeah, struggling person? fuck you, we're going to make it literally impossible for you to even get to work to earn the money to pay off these tickets, this forcing you to struggle even more". Again, not a new insight by any means, just... jesus, such small reminders of how bleak things are.

I feel this. London transport has these "please do not give to beggars, you can donate to a charity instead" announcements that just make my blood boil.

booting cars is such a potent symbol of a society that makes punishment a fetish

why do you assume the booted car owners are poor

Well, a, I never used the word "poor" anywhere in my post. I said "struggling person", which I think is a fair guess on anyone that is dealing with a booted vehicle - even just a short team struggle that led to the boot. Around here, rich people don't regularly park on the street.

I mean come on, Boring, I'm sure the majority of booted vehicles aren't Maseratis. booting usually happens when someone hasn't paid multiple tickets and usually that happens when someone can't afford to pay it.

right now in Satellite Beach, FL, they're booting vehicles when people's prepaid parking expires or they forget to pay or they have a free annual registration with the city but they juxtaposed a license plate number. and it's $80 to get it off.

I'm of the opinion that paid parking in itself is a predatory racket

It's also a pain in the ass, if you happen to regularly be in multiple cities for any reason, you have to keep juggling multiple apps because many cities have made it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to pay in any other format. Our city still has a few regular old pay stations, but depending on where you park it could be many blocks you have to walk to find one.

like these assholes like Walmart, who will pay a security company to patrol their massive parking lot 24/7, even if 5% of it is being used or the store is closed, and tow people who aren't shopping at the store.

there's a local music venue called The Orpheum in Tampa which used to be in Ybor which had ample parking, but now, is in more of a strip mall type location where there are really no parking options for miles - not even the paid kind. every lot has big scary "unauthorized vehicles may be towed" signs, and people used to just park at the Walmart nearby....and then they started towing them, even though that lot was pretty much empty.

the venue's parking lot holds maybe 30 cars and fills up within an hour. your only real option, other than parking 2 miles away, is to park in this one dirt road on a residential street, and even then, maybe only ten cars can fit. so people profiteer on the scarcity of the parking.

(actually patroling isn't even necessary, they have cameras and can just call the tow company remotely)

at my new job there's some sort of dispute between two different organizations that use the same parking lot. we get nearly daily updates about the status of the "talks" and "negotiations". yesterday we were told that the other organization is not allowed to use the lot for the time being, but that we must park on our half of the lot. so there's a giant parking lot with all the cars tightly packed into one half of it, with the other completely empty. i guess this means my employer is "winning"!

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/lDxOOKKpDVU/hqdefault.jpg

Maybe they can put a Brady Bunch style tape line down the middle!

the talk about booting cars reminds me of when we had one parking spot at a rental for our two cars, so i parked my '94 Camry around the corner for several days while we were out of town. when i came back, it was gone. i called the LAPD to report it stolen, and they said, "oh we actually towed it because it was reported by someone as being parked for more than 48 hours." cost me several hundred dollars to get it out of the tow yard.

How date you be idle for 48 hours? You must be out performing capitalism every day.

"dare", damn autocorrect ruined my dumb joke

perhaps my only real victory against these assholes was back when I went to a Deicide show in New Port Richey. didn't know the area, parking difficult to locate.

so I find this lot that's only being used by a cab for hire service, and it's pretty much an empty strip, sans for like, three cars. There are zero signs warning of towing unauthorized vehicles anywhere. Victory! so I park in one of the 3,473,643 available spots.

I come back after the show, car gone. I call the police, they find out it has been towed, and give me the number. I call that tow company who proceeds to tell me that the business towed me, and I said this was "bullshit" because there were no signs warning of towing unauthorized vehicle.

He gave me attitude right back and said "It's not bullshit, you were interfering with his ability to do business". Which of course, is a valid reason to tow someone - there doesn't need to be any signs warning of towing, say, if you park in front of the entrance to someone's business, or you block someone's driveway, etc.

He claimed the driver "needed to get into the space I was using". I responded "are you fucking kidding me? Almost the entire lot was empty, and there aren't even painted lines for parking spaces. How the fuck did he need to use that exact unmarked spot? And why, after my car was towed, and I've been standing here for a half hour, has nobody used this spot at all?". Dude was starting to bristle at my tone so I opted to end the call, since obviously I was going to have to pay this guy. So I pay him, and he's smug about the whole thing and how they follow rules.

So knowing this was horseshit, I filed a complaint with the appropriate county regulatory agency, who must have also noted it was bullshit, because they called me and told me "the tow company is willing to refund your tow dollars if you call them right now". I called him and he said "what's your address?", I gave it, and he said "cool, I'm going to sue the city because you were towed legally". got a check two days later.

Vat a country!

Narrator: he did not, in fact, sue the city